Anhedonia

A fantasy, as if on a sailing ship:
Making my calculations, sweat soaked wet
Lying flat, bunk above, close, hidden
The gaps between bent slats dangling weight
Pressure applied, visibly registeredThese modern ships can almost berth themselves
Corseted in my sleep, I can’t breathe
Stuck in this enormous estate, interred
My crinoline scratching against itself
Now I am royalty after the feast
As my engorged body is stiffening
Wealth and privilege become the atmosphere
I am queasy from the listing of goods
Indigestion, that’s how words are absorbed
How the I, we, us conceive abstractions
All endure through tamed familiar doubts
Watch thought spread under the service; stain
The image is a Thanksgiving table
O! this puzzlement fails to capture it
The troubled meaning of the verb contemn
Poetry, is itself a kind of ill
My organs jiggle, laugh lyrics, they sing
Neither surface nor content can compose
Resolve pleasure—Fun devolves into sin
Working through is always an epic fight
I just want to say, “get over yourself”
Yet I know I’m talking to no one here
How the dead rob us of our mortal joy
I escape like a stowaway princess

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Gregg Bordowitz is a writer and artist. His most recent book “General Idea: Imagevirus” was published as part of Afterall Books' One Work series. Bordowitz is currently the Program Director of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Low-Residency MFA Program.

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To Helmut, to whose rage and love the ensuing lucubration is due.
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An imposing drag queen in a leopard-print top flaunts her décolleté after the show. She totters through the glitter, tinsel, and pills scattered on the floor and walks over to a massive tropical plant, from which she fishes out a lighter, lights a cigarette, and breaks out in a terrible cough, exhaling glitter from deep in her throat. In the background, a slideshow displays oversized portrait figures wearing fanciful masks made of various trashy but glamorous materials, partly referencing...

A fantasy, as if on a sailing ship:
Making my calculations, sweat soaked wet
Lying flat, bunk above, close, hidden
The gaps between bent slats dangling weight
Pressure applied, visibly registered
These modern ships can almost berth themselves
Corseted in my sleep, I can’t breathe
Stuck in this enormous estate, interred
My crinoline scratching against itself
Now I am royalty after the feast
As my engorged body is stiffening
Wealth and privilege become the atmosphere...

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